The Tendo Contract
by FuryouMiko
Summary: When Nabiki was eight, she lost the most important person in the world to her. Unfortunately, someone was listening to her prayers.
1. Instant Plot: Just Add Kyubey

**Instant Plot: Just Add Kyubey**

 _Disclaimer: Ranma 1/2 is property of Rumiko Takahashi, Viz Media and Shogakukan. Puella Magi Madoka Magica is property of Gen Urobuchi, Shaft and others. Used here without permission and without intent to profit under imaginary licence._

"Why did you have to leave us, mama..?" Eight-year-old Nabiki Tendo wept, staring at her mother's grave. The funeral was over, Daddy had taken Akane away to give her a moment to say goodbye. "How are we gonna live now? Daddy can't look after us, and I'm too little..." she rubbed her eyes, but it was no good. They only filled with tears again. "Why can't you come back..?"

"Nothing can." A voice told her, and she imagined it was coloured with sympathy. It sounded like a young boy, her own age, or maybe a girl a little older. "But I can help you... all you have to do is make a wish."

Nabiki looked up to see a small, white cat-like creature standing on her mother's grave.

"A wish..?" She asked, trying to keep the despair out of her voice. "W-what do you want?"

"You're a smart girl, and skilled. What I'm offering you is a chance for revenge. Your mother was killed by a witches' curse. They go around spreading misery and suffering, but normal people can't see them. In return for a wish, I want your help. I can give you the power to fight witches if you form a contract with me."

"But what wish should I make, if mother can't come back?" Nabiki asked, successfully drying her eyes this time.

"Death is part of entropy, even we can't turn it back completely. But I can give you the next best thing." The creature told her.

"O-ok. I'll do it... I wish... I wish my family would have someone to always take care of us." She told the cat-creature.

"Contract accepted." It replied, before its eyes glowed softly. Nabiki felt her body burning, like it was on fire, as something attempted to rip its way out and upwards through her chest. A green glow surrounded her for a moment, before coalescing into a small, wire-bound egg that floated into her cupped hands. She stared at the newly formed Soul Gem for a moment, before knowledge slid into her mind. In the depths of the Gem, she watched as her father's and sister's memories were altered, paperwork was misfiled, and a beautiful, brunette girl who looked like a nine-year-old version of her mother condensed into being beside her.

The moment was broken as her haemonculous 'sister' hugged her gently from behind.

"It's ok, little sister. I'm here now, and I'm going to make sure everyone gets on just fine." The haemonculous told her. "All you have to do is give me a name, and I will be everything you wished for."

"Ka-Kasumi..." Nabiki whispered. "You're made from fog and mist, so... Kasumi."

"Thank you, little sister." Kasumi murmured. "Shall we go..? Mother wouldn't want us to slip into despair because she's gone."

"No..." Nabiki whispered. "She wouldn't , would she?"

* * *

Nabiki, age seventeen, grimaced slightly as one of her golems was swarmed over by familiars and crushed by their little hammers. This was one of the most powerful Witches she'd ever seen, and its legions of mallet-wielding imps were having little trouble with the paper and clay shikigami she'd called up. Maybe it was time for a change of tack.

Touching her Soul Gem, Nabiki called on her power again, wincing when it grew significantly darker. This could get dangerous. She directed the magic with her will, creating a paper dragon easily thirty feet long that swept down on the swarm of Carvers, spewing poison gas from its mouth. The winged critters fell in droves, leaving her remaining clay golems to swarm the witch with their bladed arms, the two-foot servants cutting the monster apart with precise strikes. As the witch fell, the barrier shattered around her to leave her standing in a dark alleyway. The dragon and golems vanished, turning to ordinary paper and blowing away as the magic holding them together was dismissed.

Nabiki stepped forward to sweep up the Grief Seed, before touching it to her Soul Gem for a moment, just to stave off the darkness a little for now. She would use the rest when she got back to the house, since Kyubey wasn't around to dispose of a charged Seed right now.


	2. Really, I'm Seventeen years old!

_Really, I'm seventeen years old!_

"Hey, kid. You okay?" The coarse speech and masculine voice coming from on top of the wall she was walking beside made Nabiki freeze. She knew that voice.

"Hm?" She glanced up and back at her sister's fiancé. Fortunately it seemed like he hadn't recognised her without her day to day disguise active, a small blessing at least. She fixed him with a cool, dismissive smirk. "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," she informed him, "and it'd be hard to be stranger than you."

"Been in a fight." He observed, without approaching. "Way too calm for a kid who just got attacked." She could see the tension building in him as he got ready to move. "Ah, shit. I bet there's a ring on your finger full of black, too. There aint one of them magical hags around, is there?"

"Just what do you know about witches?" Nabiki asked, narrowing her eyes. "You clearly aren't a Magical Girl, and I don't remember seeing you around before."

"Tchih... I know enough not to get between you and them, little kid or not." Ranma said. "Look, Magical Girl-chan. I can tell you're pretty tough from here, but one day you're gonna get in over your head. Look me up at the Tendo Dojo. Name's Saotome."

"And what, you'll make the big bad monster go away? There's no such thing as heroes, Saotome-san." She shook her head and turned to walk away.

"Sure there is." Ranma's voice carried his cocky smirk. "There's us."

* * *

A week later, Nabiki felt herself drifting off as she sat in the stands at the skating rink. She was so tired. It rarely felt like she had enough time to sleep at the best of times, but she had been dealing with more witches than ever since Saotome had shown up, almost like he attracted them.

It hadn't been this way at first, back when she'd first made her contract. She'd been able to cleanse her Soul Gem all the way, and had barely needed to sleep at all she'd been so full of energy. She'd learned a few 'home truths' since then.

Her body no longer demanded rest and sustenance, although she still felt hunger – her abilities never deteriorated for a lack of food or sleep beyond a slight darkening of her Soul Gem if she went without either for an extended period.

She'd noticed the other benefits even sooner. She was no stranger to pain – her father had been teaching his children martial arts since they could walk, after all – but the transformation had deadened the pain she felt, as well as making her physically stronger. She had almost given the game away the first time she had sparred with Akane after the funeral, not initially realising the difference. She'd had to stop training openly after that, although she continued to practice in private.

A few experiments had proven to her that her newfound strength wasn't any kind of magical enhancement. It was a side effect of the same effect that stopped her from being incapacitated when she was injured. Her body could no longer tell when it was damaging itself, and so the usual limitations it imposed over itself were no longer functioning, allowing her to apply a hundred percent strength constantly. She had been hurting herself without realising it – tearing ligaments and straining bones.

Of course, the nastiest surprise had come two years into her career as a Magical Girl, when she had realised that while her classmates were shooting up inches at a time, and her haemonculus was growing breasts, she may as well still have been eight years old. Six months later, things still hadn't changed.

She had a long talk with Kyubey about that. Suffice to say, the facts of Magical Girl life had not gone down well with the by then veteran. She was functionally immortal, her body nothing more than an animated meat puppet effectively no different to the paper, clay and mist shikigami she fought with.

Her Soul Gem had never quite recovered from the darkness that had flooded it with the knowledge of her lost humanity, a pitch core remaining at the very apex of the egg no matter how many seeds she used to cleanse it.

That kernel had only deepened as she had started using her creation magic to build herself a semi-real growth spurt. There were congratulations all round when she suddenly became the tallest girl in her class the week before her elementary school graduation, after lagging behind for so long. By the time she started Junior High the following April, however, she had let herself fall back into the middle of the pack. She had realised the benefit of being ordinary and easy to overlook.

A crash and a feminine shriek dragged her back to awakeness. This was what she was here for, spying in her true form once more. Mikado Sanzenin had just met Ranma Saotome again for the first time, and naturally this time his reaction had been completely different. She didn't want another surprise like the Kuno girl - this time she was going to know everything before setting the odds.

Fortunately, her ability to shed her seventeen-year-old guise and return to her eight-year-old body afforded her with some measure of stealth. Nobody would know she had been watching both groups train to better fix her bets. She winced as the Kolkhoz pair showed off their incredible crowd-control abilities, although honestly it wasn't anything Akane couldn't have done on her own... she watched with a kind of growing horror as events unfolded on the rink below her, shaking her head and sitting back after the skater sent Ranma, now a boy, flying.

"What a mess..." She muttered to herself. This was the braggart who had offered to 'help' her with Witches?

"I don't think I like the way you're looking at my meal ticket, little girl." She was brought from her thoughts by a girl's voice as the speaker sat in the chair next to her. Nabiki gave her a once-over before returning her eyes to the rink. The girl was about eleven, maybe twelve, with short blonde hair that looked like it had been hacked off with a knife. She had dirty, chipped fingernails, hard-wearing and roughly cleaned clothes, and wore walking boots.

Nabiki didn't need to see the ring on her finger to identify the girl as a rogue Magical Girl without a territory. A veteran from the way she carried herself.

"I was wondering when you would arrive." She replied, snidely. "The rate Saotome attracts Witches, it's no wonder he's picked up an ambulance chaser too."

"Tch." The girl sneered at her. "You think you're all that just 'cause you made a contract?" She asked. "This is your one warning, and you only get it 'cause you're a kid. This town's mine now, 'till he moves on again. Got it?"

Nabiki almost laughed out loud, barely manage to constrain her reaction to a sarcastic chuckle.

"You have no idea, do you? Did you even ask Kyubey about Nerima before you came here?"

"Hmph. All that rat said was that it was claimed by an old lady... which you aint."

"Seventeen." Nabiki informed her, serenely. "But I guess a newbie like you wouldn't have noticed it yet..."

"Tch, pull the other one, brat. Noticed what?"

"Magical Girls don't age." Nabiki said. "That cute body you've been neglecting? It's just a corpse, pretending to be something it's not."

"How dare you?" The blonde stood, her pupils contracting with near-berserker levels of anger. "Tonight. Be there, little girl. I will _crush_ you."

"If you insist," Nabiki glanced up at the angry girl, dismissively. "I was going to just let you hunt freely for a mere twenty thousand yen per month, but if you insist on fighting over it..."

"You aren't scared at all." The blonde relaxed herself with a visible effort. "Maybe you do have the power to back up that attitude. And you know what? I can take that deal. Better than betting on an unknown strength in known powerhouse territory. Name's Ikari. Yumei."

"Tendo Nabiki." Nabiki replied, nodding to her. "Nice doing business. First money by tonight, final payment within four weeks or I will break your Soul Gem myself."

 _End_


	3. Because They're Worth It

_Chapter 3 - Because They're Worth It_

Nabiki scowled to herself as she considered the Chinese girl entering the district. Hopefully this wouldn't take too long, but her witch-sense had dragged her out here with something akin to urgency. There were a few hours until Akane's match against the Golden Pair, but now she was here this had Ranma-brand trouble written all over it, other than one detail.

The girl had two severely blackened soul gems the girl had pinned to her silk shirt. If she was a Magical Girl, she was the oldest Nabiki had seen aside from herself, but she didn't wear a ring. If one of the gems were hers, keeping it active constantly would certainly be a reason for its darkness, but that didn't explain the second... really, there was only one explanation for that. The girl must have destroyed a Magical Girl's body and kept her soul gem as a trophy.

If this girl was hunting Magical Girls, then Nabiki had no desire to be alone when she confronted her. While she was confident in her own abilities, she most definitely believed in hedging her bets. Fortunately, there was another option.

Nabiki reached into her bag and pulled out a paper bookmark, folding it in half and tying a strand of hair around the fold. She blew life into the shikigami and cast it to the air, tasking it with tracking the Chinese girl as she herself discarded her adult guise and turned away to hop down from the roof she was observing from, transforming as she fell.

She hadn't bothered with a transformation sequence for years, the armour simply materialising around the black leotard she wore under all the simulacra of normality she usually built. The costume was build around sleeveless black dress blouse, the bottom three buttons unfastened and a smooth, white skirt that fell just above her knee. Her feet were clad in plate-armoured boots that went all the way up to cover her knees.

The boots were decorated with curling gold vine patterns that were echoed on the steel vambraces that protruded from under her sleeves. Her Soul Gem rested comfortably against her throat, set into a white choker. In the depths of the gem was etched her personal emblem, a single ryo coin like those found in the clutches of makeneko statuettes.

The whole outfit was covered by a long-sleeved, long-skirted black leather coat. Her emblem was writ large on the back of her coat like a sukeban's mon – when she was younger, the ryo motif had been repeated as a pair of earrings, but she had discarded those after a rival magical girl had nearly torn her ear in half in an early battle over her territory.

It took her ten minutes to reach the ice cream parlor she knew Yumei liked to hang out at between witch hunts. The blonde was in there now, casually using her magic to scam extra treats from the counter boy while the handful of other customers carried on with their lives, oblivious. Nobody batted an eyelid as Nabiki joined her, even as the other girl pushed a spoon at her in invitation.

"My, someone is feeling generous." Nabiki quipped, taking up the implement and scooping up a mouthful of sundae.

"The last time you came to find me," Yumei started, then swallowed and pointed her spoon somewhere over Nabiki's shoulder, "it was with news of a high-level Witch. You let me take the grief seed, which, by the way, was absolutely _massive_. I'm just balancing the books so you don't bite me in the arse later."

"Heh," Nabiki shook her head. "Not so much this time. It's not a Witch moving in that worries me." She span her spoon in her fingers, before taking another sample. Yumei ran a hand through her recently neatened pixie-bob, waiting patiently for Nabiki to continue.

"A Chinese girl just entered the district. Long, purple..." Nabiki paused as Yumei started growling softly, anger baring her teeth and contracting her pupils. "I take it you know her."

"That bitch is here already?" Yumei asked. "Fuck. Shit wank bollocks _cuntwaffles!_ " The blond snarled, cutting herself off. "Look... this place was great, but I guess it's time for us to move on."

"Move on?" Nabiki asked, lifting an eyebrow. "Us?"

"Me an' the meal ticket. That girl's name's Shampoo. She's seriously bad news. I used to run with a couple of other girls." Yumei explained, gesturing with her spoon wildly. "She killed Alice and Xiao," she snapped her fingers, "just like that. She's on some kind of murder-quest to track down our mutual friend. As soon as she shows up, he moves on, runs away because he's too much of a wimp to kill her himself, and by the time I get there she's recovered enough to kick my arse three ways to Sunday."

"Yumei, you're saying this girl is as strong as a Witch?" Nabiki asked, eyes opening wide. "And Saotome-san can _defeat_ her?"

"I'm sayin' she killed two three-month Magical Girls without hesitation. It was a tougher fight than I made it sound, I guess, but she wears their soul gems for jewellery. I _might_ be able to take her, if I prepared the field and so on, but she's like a ghost."

"I can find her." Nabiki told her. "They were your friends, right? Those two girls she killed. You called them by name."

"Yeah... Yeah. They were my friends." Yumei admitted after a moment. She paused, nibbling on her spoon pensively. "As much as you can have friends in this business, she added, eventually.

"Their soul gems are nearly black." Nabiki told her. "You know, I did an experiment once. Lent my soul gem to my older sister, asked her to go for a walk with it. My body collapsed. Dead as a doornail. Fortunately she heard and ran back. I got back in control as soon as I got in range again, but those thirty seconds were some of the most horrible of my life."

"What do you mean?" Yumei frowned. "I know you said our bodies are just corpses, but..."

"The soul gem is where we really are." Nabiki said. "In here." She tapped the gem at her throat. "Your friends are still alive, sort of... trapped in limbo. The soul gem still feels like a body, like you have arms, legs, hands, but they're not touching anything. You can't see. You can't hear. Total sensory deprivation."

"Well, damn." Yumei shook her head. "They must be insane by now. Trapped like that for over a month..."

"Nearly black." Nabiki repeated. "A few days from cracking. Then... then, two witches will be born."

"Shit. Really?" Yumei shook her head. "Somehow I feel like that should be some kind of massive revelation, but coming from you I almost expected something like that." She took a scoop of ice cream, contemplatively. Nabiki let her process for a while, carefully keeping her breathing even and her body relaxed.

"Why did you tell her that?" A familiar voice asked, as Kyubey jumped onto the table. "You know, most magical girls react badly to learning the truth."

"Well," Nabiki shrugged, putting a hand on the alien's head and pushing it down against the table before it could steal any of their ice cream. "Even I need to talk about things sometimes, I guess." She looked back at Ikari. "You coping?"

"I… yeah." Yumei shook her head and put her spoon down for a moment to rub at her soul ring. "Wow, this really is a damn raw deal, Kyu. No wonder you're such a cagey little monster. Whole thing's just one big self-defeating cycle. Witches exist, so we need magical girls to fight them. Magical girls turn into witches…" She growled, softly, and woke her soul gem, clenching her fist around it until it creaked. Nabiki tilted her head to see, and there was indeed a little hardened pearl of darkness at the bottom of the gem, surrounded by swirling miasma that filled about a quarter of the red stone.

"If it helps-" Kyubey started, only to squeak comically as Nabiki pushed him off the table.

"That would be too much honesty." Nabiki said, before looking at Yumei. "Even I don't know the real reason behind everything. Where the first Witch came from… why Kyubey got involved… what he is." She shook her head, quirking her lips into a wry smirk. "I don't want to know."

She conjured her own soul gem and showed it to Yumei. "That little black pearl in the bottom. That is the price of your knowledge of the truth. In this business, ignorance is bliss. When the taint in a soul gem crystallises like that, it doesn't matter how many Grief Seeds you use, it will never be cleared."

"Your pearl is bigger than mine." Yumei observed, distantly. "Just how battered is your hope? What keeps you going?"

"I've taken a few blows, and I am very tired, but I will keep on kicking. Keep fighting." Nabiki shook her head. "Considering what we have to do next, I think I'll save that story. You're useful to have around… you're less likely to leave if you want my secrets."

"Love you too, Nabiki." Yumei said, shaking her head with a sardonic smirk, before glaring at the nearly empty, entirely melted ice cream glass between them. "I guess that's our cue to move as well."

"Oh, yes." Kyubey popped back up again, having been winding around their feet as they spoke. "There's a magical girl killer in town. You should probably stay clear of them."

Nabiki and Yumei looked at each other, and sighed.

* * *

Shampoo prowled through the streets of the Japanese city. She hadn't found any sign of the prey yet, but the previous signs had pointed towards her coming to this town. She paused, suddenly. She'd heard something, like paper-

Spinning, she pulled a chui out of her hidden weapon space and used the large mace to fend off the incoming attack. A paper dragon, two feet long, was attempting to cut her neck with its claws. Around her, the Japanese sheep were scattering into buildings to watch from safety.

" _Don't get in my way, witch!_ " She ordered in Chinese, recognising the dragon as a puppet of some sort. " _I am here on an honour quest._ "

The dragon deigned not to reply, whipping around the blocking weapon to slice one of her trophies free. One of the shifting brooches she had taken from the last two witches to stand in her way. The dragon flitted out of reach, transferring the yellow brooch to its tail, and hovered before her. Shampoo snarled at the insult and hurled herself after it. " _So it's revenge for your cowardly sisters? Your petty revenge has nothing on three thousand years of Amazon grudges!_ "

Shampoo chased the dragon down an alleyway, her chui coming down several times to shatter concrete in near-misses as it flickered back in to bleed her with its inch-long paper talons. She restrained her ire, however - she was too experienced a hunter to let it wear her out when it so obviously wanted to lead her somewhere. Back to its cowardly master, she hoped.

Over the road, and then another dark alleyway later and she burst out into open air. Construction materials lay abandoned around her in the fenced-off square of land, and the dragon was winding its way through the air to coil around the shoulders of a small witch-child in a long coat. It dropped the brooch into her hand. The girl examined it before nodding to the familiar warrior beside her.

The blonde looked neater than the last time Shampoo had seen her, but she wore the same black leotard, red sailor collar and pleated skirt as before. Like the younger girl, she wore armoured knee-high boots, with bracers of a similar design on her forearms. Her gemstone sat in a brooch on her chest. In her hand was a polearm, one end a wicked yanyuedao, the other a crescent moon blade.

The blonde said something bitter to the shorter brunette, who nodded grimly and lifted the brooch to her dragon. The paper demon took the brooch in its jaws, then swallowed it, the white paper bleeding through black and yellow a moment later.

No matter. The stones were pretty, but here were two more just waiting to be taken. Shampoo charged forwards, screaming her challenge at the two foreigners who were too stupid to understand a proper language, and drew her dao in her other hand to smash aside the crescent blade that came spinning towards her, detached from the bottom of the blonde's staff weapon.

Yumei threw herself to the side to avoid Shampoo's first strike, turning a handspring and flipping back into the air to catch her returning crescent blade. Nabiki had dived the other way, and a moment later the construction yard was blanketed in conjured fog, reducing their visibility to effectively zero. Just as planned. Yumei crouched, and then sent her crescent blade out again, aiming for the feeling of the soul gem pinned to Shampoo's chest. There was a feminine snarl of pain, and then Yumei was relocating again as their Chinese opponent lunged out of the fog with her mace. She was bleeding from a shallow cut down the side of the neck where she had almost dodged the flying weapon, but it wasn't enough.

It was all Yumei could do to stay one step ahead of the Chinese girl's swinging weapons as they came at her from alternating sides. She drew on all the unrestrained power of her cursed body, feeling muscles tearing and repairing themselves as she parried and deflected with both ends of her crescent moon staff.

Suddenly, Shampoo faltered, staggering and leaving herself open as Nabiki's yellow dragon slashed her back on the way past. Yumei lunged forward with one hand, grabbing the second brooch from Shampoo's chest before leaping away into the fog.

Nabiki smirked to herself as Yumei brought the second soul gem to her. She crafted another shikigami, a foot-tall paper humanoid, and fed the soul gem to it as she had her dragon. A moment later, the shikigami purpled, growing as it drew from the fog to shape a body in the same way as Nabiki did when she aged herself up. The dragon returned a moment later, and Nabiki fed it more of her magic. Within seconds, the two shikigami were simulacra of the dead magical girls, their faces twisted by pain and madness.

Unable to speak, the two resurrected magical girls looked at each other, and then stepped forward to kiss a stricken-looking Yumei on the cheeks. The living warrior blushed slightly and closed her eyes against burgeoning tears.

"The magic won't last long." Nabiki told them, declining to comment otherwise. She threw her voice to the other side of the lot in the mist. "When it's over, you two can have peace. But for now, you can have revenge on the bitch who killed and tortured you without a care."

The girls nodded, and turned to run into the fog. Yumei moved to follow them, only to be stopped by Nabiki, who had sat down and formed her Soul Gem in her hand. She produced a pair of Grief Seeds from somewhere. "I need you to protect me, in case she doubles back." Nabiki whispered. "Those two can take care of Shampoo."

"Alright." Yumei grimaced, and set her crescent moon staff across her body, standing over the older magical girl as Nabiki slipped into a meditative trance, the two Grief Seeds drawing off the corruption barely as quickly as it grew, the heavy strain of maintaining the two empowered humanoid shikigami almost more than she could handle.

Shampoo panted. She had fallen back out of the fog after chasing the smaller girls' voice into a blind corner, only to be confronted by the two girls she had killed already. The witch must have used those stones to resurrect them somehow.

The yellow one swing a gold-gauntleted fist at her, which she knocked aside with her chui. The purple-clad girl followed up with a sweep from her warscythe, which Shampoo dodged under, before going on the offensive with the follow-through of her deflection, bringing the chui around to graze the purple girl's belly.

Even though their faces were full of nothing but madness, their fighting ability actually seemed to be higher this time around. Shampoo figured it had to be the effects of the new girl's necromancy.

Another round of rapid-fire deflections, evasions and ripostes followed as the two resurrected girls did their level best to kill her. It was Shampoo's turn to fight desperately, as while the two girls' skills were nothing compared to her own even with the boosts, their physical power was overwhelming, far beyond what should have been possible for such slight bodies. They fought with near-perfect co-ordination, always ready to capitalise on openings made by the other, and Shampoo felt herself beginning to tire as she was forced to accept another bruise in exchange for avoiding being gutted.

This wasn't going anywhere, she realised, except her grave. The two dead girls were not tiring, nor did any minor wounds even seem to slow them down. Shampoo set her foot against a wall and pushed off, going on the offensive and discarding any pretence of defending herself as she hurled her chui at the gauntlet-user, taking her dao in both hands and ramming it under the purple one's guard and into her stomach. As before, the magical girl showed no signs of being affected by the injury until Shampoo twisted the blade and ripped it upwards through the girl's body, splitting her open with far too much ease until the blade caught on something in her chest. There was a moment of resistance, then a shattering sound. A heartbeat later, the girl's face went slack and she dissolved into a flurry of coloured paper that turned white even as it drifted down.

* * *

Nabiki let out a strangled cry as a mote of purple swirled into being in her soul gem, before evening out and fading to her usual gilt. One of the Grief Seeds cracked, the miasma backflowing until Kyubey jumped in to scoop it up.

* * *

Shampoo turned to the other girl, who snarled wordlessly and hurled herself forward, launching a barrage of explosive punches. Shampoo deflected the first few, but they came in too hard, too fast for her to get all of them. The Chinese girl lashed out with her sword, winning space in exchange for the weapon, and dived past her opponent to grab her chui. Bringing her second mace out of her hidden weapons space, she set herself against the brawler's next charge, coming out of the exchange much better as she brought both maces around into her chest, knocking the brawler back into the wall behind her, cracking it.

Shampoo wasted no time following up on the attack, hitting the brawler again, this time in the head. The girl's hairpin cracked into the wall first this time, and shattered. A moment later, the second shikigami dissolved into paper. Shampoo was about to turn away and return to hunt for the witches when a familiar voice caught her ear. Just on the other side of this wall… she raised her chui and broke through.

"Ranma!" She declared, catching sight of her true prey. The witches could wait. "I kill!"

* * *

Nabiki shuddered, more prepared this time as her second shikigami was destroyed. The second grief seed cracked. The waiting Kyubey scooped it out of her hands with his tail and into the true mouth hidden in his back.

"That was close! A moment more and they would have hatched!" Kyubey declared. "You two are really stupid, you know? A few days more and they would have turned on their own and dragged that hunter girl into their labyrinth and she wouldn't have even been a problem any more."

"I know." Nabiki croaked, then flopped over backwards and dismissed her transformation. "But we needed her dealt with first. Sorry, Yumei. I guess we failed again."

"Shampoo is still alive? What about Alice and Xiao?"

"Dead." Kyubey said, cheerfully. "It was a little strange, but that girl broke their soul gems. She's fighting that red-haired girl again now."

"How do you know that?" Yumei asked, lowering her guard.

"I'm watching, of course." Kyubey replied, as if that were a perfectly reasonable explanation. "That redhead would make an excellent magical girl, if she actually qualified. I might try and contract her anyway. She has more potential than any other boy I've ever encountered!"

"Leave Ranma alone, Kyubey. He's a Witch magnet already, and we like him that way." Nabiki admonished the evil little rat.

"Well, since you asked so nicely, I suppose..."


End file.
